Dr Edwin Jabbari has recently finishing his general medical training. To kick start his career in neurology, he has now taken up the post of Sara Koe Research Fellow and will undertake a three year study funded by PSPA. In his first blog, Ed tells us about his first few months in post and plans for his project.
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Hi everyone! It’s been a fantastic start to life as the latest Sara Koe PSPA funded clinical research fellow so I thought I’d give a pre-Christmas update with regards to what I’ve been up to.
4 months have passed incredibly quickly but looking back, it’s been a very busy and productive period with a very steep learning curve….
Firstly (and most importantly), I’ve had the opportunity to meet so many of you, whether it be at the recent PSPA meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine in October, in the clinics at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery or as a research patient in the PROSPECT study. Seeing and speaking to patients and their families has undoubtedly contributed to improving my understanding of PSP.
Secondly, the PROSPECT study continues to be progressing well. I’ve overseen the recruitment and assessment of a number of patients and anticipate that there will be a lot more patients in the new year who will be having their 6 month/1 year follow up assessments. It won’t be long before I’ll be in a position to analyse the baseline data that we’ve obtained so far. This will hopefully prove to be very insightful so I’m quite excited about it!
[/column] [column md=”6″]In the meantime, my own personal research continues to focus on predictive biomarkers of disease progression in PSP, under the supervision of Prof Huw Morris and Prof Henrik Zetterberg. I should also take this opportunity to publicly thank Dr Nadia Magdalinou and Prof Andrew Lees whose previous work have given me the platform to carry out my current research. It’s very important to briefly explain how this research can translate into something meaningful for patients with PSP and their families so here goes. Essentially, once someone is given a diagnosis of PSP it can be very difficult to predict how the disease will progress. Therefore, I am looking into whether blood and CSF (spinal fluid) based biomarkers can predict the speed and pattern (clinical subtype) of progression. This potentially provides valuable information on prognosis for both patients and their families. The other potential benefit is that these biomarkers, alongside clinical examinations, MRI scans etc, can be used in future clinical trials to assess whether a drug is beneficial or not.
I hope to be able to provide an update on this at some point next year. Until then, I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!
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